Graeme Thickins on Tech

Reflections & analysis about innovation, technology, startups, investing, healthcare, and more .... with a focus on Minnesota, Land of 10,000 Lakes. Blogging continuously since 2005.

Tag: Graeme Thickins (Page 17 of 55)

The Clear and Simple Solution to the Current Downturn: The Entrepreneurial Economy

December 20, 2008 / / 2 Comments

The big answer to our current economic plight is not a new one: it is staring us right in the face. It has brought us out of many a recession before this one, and it will do so again. It is simply this: the ingenuity and perseverance of the American entrepreneur. Something never be taken lightly! 

I was delighted to recently stumble across a blog post from GrowThink entitled The "Downturn" — Keeping Things in Perspective, by the firm's founder, Jay Turo.  It is so good, I just want to do everything I can to spread it. GrowThink-blog
I *so* wish I would have written it, because this every message has been going around in my head for some time now. And it's a message I guarantee you won't get from the mainstream media!

I wanted to call it out here as required reading.  What you should get out of it is this: stop paying attention to the "woe-is-me" media … flight negativity with every bone in your body … and do everything you can to support our country's strong, ever-committed entrepreneurial economy.  It is THE major source of new jobs and wealth creation in this country, and we all benefit from it greatly in myriad ways, directly or indirectly.  It has been, and will continue to be, what makes our economy grow, and our country great.  And no recession can hold it down!  People, layoffs are about the past — the entrepreneurial economy is about the future…and change, positive change!!

I believe the year 2009 will bring great things, and I'm very proud to say I'm a supporter and believer in American Capitalism.  It is the best political and economic system in the world, and it's a strong now as it ever was.

UPDATE 12/22/08: I was delighted to see that my friend Brian Solis wrote an *absolutely awesome* post on TechCrunch the day after I posted the above, called Fear Kills Businesses, Dead.  It's a great complement to what I'm saying here in my post.  There are so many reasons for businesses to be positive — yes, right now — particularly if you're a lean, mean, nimble tech startup!  Read this post by Brian, and take it to heart!  It even quotes my friend and past client Steve Larsen, who used to be based here in Minnesota.  (See an article I wrote on Steve earlier this year, which appeared on "Chief Executive" magazine's site: Zen and the Art of Startup Maintenance.)

How to Watch High-Def TV on Your Mac – Cheap

November 17, 2008 / / 10 Comments

Got a cool new product to tell you about — the Pinnacle TV for Mac HD Mini Stick. (Pinnacle is a division of Avid.)  It's available now, and you can find it priced around $120 at various online stores.  I was lucky enough to get my hands on a review copy recently (thanks, Andy Marken, PR guru extraordinaire), and I have to say I'm impressed. PinnacleHD-ministick
I don't watch a whole lot of TV — mostly sports and news (of course)…and, oh, documentaries (great for helping one fall asleep).  But I gotta say I sure enjoy the TV experience much more watching in HD!  (I include some quick screenshots here that I snapped last evening of the awesome Sunday Night Football game between the Redskins and the Cowboys.)

Till now, I didn't even own an HD set — that's how little I care about watching TV.  So, this post is both a result of my being amazed at the quality of HD, and the fact that I can now easily watch TV on my MacBook.  And I can watch it in whatever window size I want, even fullscreen.

So what is it?  The heart of the system (as shown above) is a little USB 2.0 HDTV tuner stick.  It lets you watch HDTV for free on your Mac, based on whatever broadcast HDTV signals you can pick up in your location. It picks up these signals via a telescoping antenna that plugs into the tuner stick and has about a five-foot cord so you can position it for best reception. It even has a strong magnet on the base so you can mount it to a metal surface for better reception. (I attached it last night to the large hanging light fixture over my kitchen table, and got great reception. Note: be careful to keep that magnet away from your hard drive!) I was able to pick up about 15 HD channels over the air here in the suburban Twin Cities, and I expect that number will be increasing over time.

HD-ministick-components

You can get a ton more channels (in most locations, I suspect) if you have cable TV service in your home.  Just connect a coax cable to the HD stick (via an adaptor included) and connect that to a cable TV outlet in your home. They say that will get you all the HD channels your carrier provides, except for the premium channels. I expect that could be somewhere between 60 and 100 in my town, though I haven't tried it yet. But, wow, that Sunday Night Football game last evening (broadcast via our local NBC affiliate, KARE) sure was an excellent viewing experience.

So, again for you tech-spec freaks: the Pinnacle HD mini stick "supports both digital over-the-air TV (ATSC) and unencrypted digital cable TV (Clear QAM)."

Pinancle-Michaels+Madden

Time-Shifting, Anyone?
But, wait — that's not all, sports fans. Don't you dare stop reading. The HD mini stick comes with software that lets you record HDTV programs and play them back anytime. And you can record to either your hard drive or to DVD. The software is Elgato's EyeTV® Lite TV viewing and recording software. So now, for about $120,  you've turned your Mac not only into an HDTV set, but a TiVo as well! To schedule your recordings, the installation process signs you up (if you elect) to a free Internet-based electronic program guide.

Pinnacle-TonyRomo

Suddenly, that $120 add-on to your Mac is starting to look like even more of a bargain, no?  Talk about a fun, new toy….

What's also cool is it comes with a nifty little mini remote control, which worked flawlessly for me. It even had the battery already installed (just pull a little plastic tab thingy to activate it). And, to top off the contents in the small box — a really nicely designed package — you get a little flannel travel bag with a drawstring that nicely holds all the piece-parts, so you can easily take it along in your briefcase or suitcase.

Pinnacle-LiveRecording

I wonder how many geeks with laptops we're gonna see now in Starbucks or wherever watching TV instead of working? (Oh, you non-Mac people — poor souls — there's a version for you, too.  So don't go getting all pouty.)

The Installation and Setup Process

I must say that my experience with this product overall was excellent, from the time I opened the box. I don't know who at Pinnacle is in charge of "customer experience," but my hat's off to them.  This one was a pleasure — well-designed packaging, nice, easy-to-read instructions, and the entire setup and installation of the software went without a hitch all the way through. Great onscreen instructions and prompts, too — very simple and intuitive.  Everything as I would have wanted it. This experience was the closest I think I've seen to "the Apple experience."  And that is a very high bar.  So, I not only highly recommend this product, as working great and doing what it promises, but I recommend it as a very satisfying customer experience overall. I think you'll agree. 

I can hear the sound of cash registers right now ringing up lots of holiday sales for this one…

UPDATE (11/17/08): I just realized I wrote this review without saying a single negative thing about the product. Well, I've been trying to think of one, but I really can't. Oh, I guess the cord from the antenna base to the USB stick could be a little longer — like maybe 8 feet. And I noticed the USB stick can get kinda hot, but I'm not sure if that's an issue, since my viewing was not affected. Those are about the only things remotely approaching a downside that I can think of.

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Defrag08: The Definitive Twitter Firehose

November 5, 2008 / / 4 Comments

Well, it's over. Another great Defrag conference — the second annual, to be exact.  And what a great event it was, in downtown Denver on Monday and Tuesday of this week. Defrag08-sign
Aha moments running rampant… Here's my entire Twitter coverage, in convenient "last first" arrangement for your reading pleasure… :-)  That is, if you start by scrolling back to my last Defrag08 tweet on Tuesday 11/4 about 4:30 pm, when I left for the airport.  My coverage totaled some 200 tweets, but I lost count.

Another way to see the ENTIRE FREAKING FIREHOSE is to simply type "Defrag08" in the search box at search.twitter.com.  That will show everyone's tweets that had the hashtag "#defrag08" contained within the already-oh-so-short 140 character tweet length.

And a ton of tweets it was! One speaker did an informal survey of the approximately 300 in attendance, and found upwards of 60% were Twittering the event! That has to be a high point for the larger tech gatherings like this that I regularly attend. (I wonder how many were live-blogging it?  I didn't hear of a single person! Surely a few were. But then blogging is so 2004.)

Yet another feed was one set up by EventVue especially for Defrag. This is a community site that has conference producers sign up with them, allowing their attendees to each create a profile, then interact with other attendees — even in the days before the event begins, as well as during and after. A few months ago, they added a Twitter feature. The nice thing about EventVue's aggregated Defrag feed — which captured the tweets of everyone at the event who was Twittering (as long as they had set up a profile on EventVue) — is that each Twitterer's profile photo showed up next to their tweets, so you could really associate the name to the face. (Note one thing on both of these feeds: post-Defrag tweets started showing up today. Also, I see that EventVue, via the feed link above, isn't allowing me to scroll back very far, to all the tweets during the actual event, Monday and Tuesday. I suspect they may also shut off new entries to this feed soon, or take it down altogether.  However, they previously also created the "@Defrag08" account at Twitter, where you can see all the event's tweets, going all the way back.)

It was amazing the worldwide conversation that all of us Defrag tweeps managed to get going during this very jam-packed event! Here are a couple of screen shots of replies I was getting to my Twitter account.  My favorite?  The one from "johnsonLAB" in Berlin at 1:00 am…  🙂

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UPDATE:  Oh, I almost forgot — photos!  Here's my Flickr set (tagged "Defrag08"), which includes many of the slides I found interesting.

Anticipating Defrag….

October 29, 2008 / / 0 Comments

Getting excited about the Defrag conference, kicking off this Sunday evening in Denver. Once again, Eric Norlin and his colleagues who originally conceived this event (including VC Brad Feld) have planned a wonderful conference program, and again attracted a stellar group — coming off a blowout successful first-year event a year ago. Defrag2008-logo
(I wrote about the inaugural version extensively: here's an index of my Defrag 2007 posts. Actually, I believe it was the last event I live-blogged, versus the live-Twittering approach I've adopted since for my conference reporting. Why has Twitter just sort of taken over?) And, with this year's advisory board including people like Esther Dyson (of PC Forum fame) and Chris Shipley (of DEMO fame), how could this not be another fantastic conference?

Last year's experience was so great in every way that I took to describing it as basically like a religious experience. I was in awe hobnobbing with so many luminaries and big thinkers. I also got to connect again with many of my friends from the early days of the Internet — Doc Searls, Chris Locke, David Weinberger, Steve Larsen, and others.  I love my (younger) friend Aaron Fulkerson's testimonial comment about Defrag 2007, used on the current web site: "The
event had quite the attendee and speakers
list. You couldn’t spit and not
hit an industry notable."  It was an amazing group — all told, about 300. The collective intelligence in the room was unlike
anything I've ever experienced, and the program, keynotes, and
discussions — both the panels and the informal variety — were
off-the-charts valuable and thought-provoking.  There was just this energy level that I can't fully describe…that we were about to collectively imagine the future of the Internet, the social web, a whole new level of collaboration. You had to be there.

And you should be there this year! It's not too late, and I even have a juicy discount code posted in my sidebar to the right. [Shhh, don't tell anybody.  I'm not sure I'm supposed to be offering that to all my blog readers — but what the hell! Maybe Eric Norlin won't read this… 🙂 ] The best way to get the real skinny about what's in store this year is to check out the Defrag blog, which Eric writes so well. The man has a gift for storytelling. And, of course, check out the list of stellar speakers…and the great agenda. This conference is packed with aha moments and extreme takeaways.

What's also cool is that there are three speakers from my home state of Minnesota. Rich Hoeg of Honeywell, whom I met at our "Minnebar" BarCamp event this past spring, will be speaking about social search in the corporate environment, and Connie Bensen, a community strategist now working with Network Solutions, will be on a panel about "making the social web." Oneplace_logo
And I'm especially looking forward to a panel on "Re-imagining
the metaphors behind collaborative
tools," which includes my friend Steve Kickert of Minnesota's own Riverock Technologies, who'll be talking about his very cool, just released from beta OnePlace™ online team collaboration and work management system. 
These guys are some amazing developers, and this thing rocks. (I know — I use it!) You can catch some buzz about OnePlace™ just starting to appear here and here. [Full disclosure: I'm a consultant to Steve's company.]

Want to see who else you'll be able to hobnob with in this intimate setting?  Check out this blog post that lists just some of the many companies attending.  People, I'm tellin' ya, this is a heavy-duty crowd!  Want to read a great rundown on what your two-day experience will be like at Defrag?  Check out this blog post, which will give you "a sense of what you'll encounter" at this great conference.

I really hope you can make it to Defrag. See you in Denver!

David Meerman Scott to Speak at ‘Social Media Breakfast’ in Twin Cities October 31

October 11, 2008 / / 1 Comment

I’m really happy to report that I successfully convinced one of my famous-author friends to speak to our next Social Media Breakfast here in the Twin Cities. We call it "SMBMSP" for short, and this is our eighth monthly event. Smbmsplogo
David Meerman Scott, a very well-traveled and popular speaker, is the author of the top-selling book, The New Rules for Marketing and PR. Davidmscott_2

He told me back in August that he’d be coming to MInneapolis for a seminar on October 30, so I asked him if he would consider staying over another night if we could schedule one of our breakfast meetings on the 31st. Newrulesbookcover_2
He was gracious enough to say yes, so we got some sponsors, and now we have it all scheduled. It will be held at Deluxe Corp’s headquarters in Shoreview, MN, thanks to my friend Steve Neilsen, whose company, PartnerUp.com, was recently acquired by Deluxe. The meeting is scheduled for 8:00 to 10:30 am on Friday, October 31. Attendance is free, open to anyone interested in social media, and the first 100 attendees will receive a free copy of David’s book. (By the way, David blogs here.)
To register, go to our group’s social network site at smbmsp.ning.com (clip shown here), click on the "Events" tab, then click on "SMB-Twin Cities 8," and then look for the "Order Now" button. Smbmspningpage_2
Or, just go directly to our RSVP page. Look forward to seeing you there!  Oh — and costumes are optional…  🙂

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